


Loosen My Lips

by sidneybelveire



Series: The Pull of Your Heart (Earth-57289) [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Earth-57289, Multi, additional content for your fanfic readership needs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:46:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29893071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidneybelveire/pseuds/sidneybelveire
Summary: Janet van Dyne has questions and is possibly regretting asking them.Psych, she wants the deets and has no regrets.Extra parts and scraps that didn't make it into the main fic.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark
Series: The Pull of Your Heart (Earth-57289) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2197887
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Loosen My Lips

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter and most chapters here will be edited later to include more 'bookend' style intros and outros and feature the questions getting asked, but for right now I'm just uploading what I have that isn't immediately a huge spoiler.

“Hey,” says a forgotten voice. “You ready for wheels up, Naked?”

“Don’t you call me that, Bouncy,” Tony says to the outline of a stocky man leaning against the side of a yellow Cessna, while cupping a hand to make him out better against the early morning sunlight. “That’s what your mother calls me in bed, it’d be rude of you to steal her thunder, y’know.”

Bounce cackles in a baritone of unmitigated glee and pearly white teeth as he descends from his lofty height to bearhug Tony. Tony idly hopes Dino, still in the backpack, doesn’t try to escape and recreate Jurassic Park. Or Alien.

“I’ve been stealing thunder since I could get my rocks off and I’m not stopping now, your necrophiliac habits aside,” Bounce replies. Tony thumps him on the back a few times to get him to release the vise grip before he gets it into his head to pick him up and spin him around.

Oh, male bonding activities, Tony thinks. Never change, except actually please do change. His poor ribcage.

“How ya been, you grimy little tank rat?”

“Watch your fuckin’ language there, pal,” he says in response, taking off his unusual luggage. 

“Wait, did you really take a cab to meet me at the airfield? Are you crazy? You back on the wagon or nah, man?” Bounce grabs the luggage and tosses it into the hatch of the hold with surprising gentleness. Tony wonders if he’s gotten into fostering dogs like he’d talked about back in the desert, and doesn’t look at the prosthetic leg. 

He’s not in that line of business anymore.

“I’m clean as the proverbial squeaky whistle, thanks so much for asking, you rude motherfucker,” he says, clambering up to the seat level. It’s more cramped than he was expecting but not too horrible. 

“No, I believe it, even though that fucking goatee looks like it went through a bender,” Bounce says, and then as Tony sputters in indignant offense, continues, “but I could’ve come got you, I have a car and shit.” 

“I’m making you take me cross country in a light aircraft on a whim, I’m not also making you drive from the boonies to NYC to get my ass, Bounce. What would your wife say, huh?”

“Probably ‘Sure, you can get out of my damn house faster.’ I think Mel loves them dogs more than me, it’s a sad life I lead,” he says, getting ready to take off.

“They’re cuter than you, I would imagine. You doing the pitbull thing after all?”

“Nah, not really full-on. Mel’s nearly done with the veterinary degree, we’ll probably be fuckin’ horse farmers or some shit. Horse stables is big money, make even your shitty old man seem cheap.”

“Well he was already pretty cheap, so it’s a low bar, there,” says Tony. “California, here we come. You mind if I nap on the flight, or you want some company?”

“Knock yourself out, I’m used to flying shipments solo anyways.”

“No sweet jams? No sexy phone calls with Miz Ramirez?”

“Need to hear the air traffic controller, you shithead. Go to sleep, Naked, you look more exhausted than when I last saw you, and you was 100 pounds soaking wet,” Bounce waves a shoo-ing hand at him, awkwardly over the cockpit space.

“If that, even,” Tony says through a yawn. “Wake me up if you need a little attention or musical interlude.” 

He barely hears the predictably profane response before he’s out like a light.

Maybe it’s being back in the company of a fellow jarhead, or maybe it’s the deployment style of getting a little shut-eye wherever he can fit to doze off, but he thinks he dreams of the desert again, greener than it seems from the newspaper reports and tasting like thick tea.

He wakes up feeling like he’d been crying but Bounce doesn’t mention anything one way or the other, just dusts a massive hand over Tony’s head to mess up his hair for no good reason.

“How far we out,” he mumbles, thumbing the corners of his eyes awake and discreetly checking for too much liquid but finding nothing.

“Maybe ‘nother hour or so. Stretch out your spine, I’m crinkled up just looking at you.”

“No comment on my snoring, huh?”

“Nah, you always slept like a little baby,” he replies, which is some prime grade-A bullshit that Tony’s not gonna call him out on.

“Well I figured I would’ve woken up in a cornfield somewhere if I’d been too noisy. Sprayed the crops with my leftovers still sawing logs.”

“You know damn well this ain’t that kinda plane,” Bounce nags, before his eyes light up. “Shit, ain’t you say you was just working for James Fuckin’ Rhodes? I know my man Iron Man wouldn’t let you get these wings twisted like that, c’mon.”

Tony’s blaming the altitude for the way all the air seizes up in his lungs.

“Fuck, all right, we don’t gotta talk about it if you gonna look like that when I bring it up.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s just…” Tony trails off, thinking of what from the whole mess to fill in the blank with and make a nice tidy package. “Didn’t work out like I hoped.”

“He didn’t live up to the hype? Big man about it, acting too rich or something?” Bounce grew up in a trailer park, if Tony remembers right, and more than once he’d read a much younger Tony the riot act whenever he’d said something Howard had put in his head.

“Oh hell no, Rhodes is a class fucking act. No matter how cool he looks on the news? Think ten times that in person. No joke.” Tony’s not going to let anyone think ill of his former employer, let alone someone who gossips as much as one Staff Sgt. Castle. All it would take is a poor choice of audience for some dumb rumor to start about oh, Bounce’s old army buddy says Iron Man’s not so great when you’re working for him, always figured he was full of it behind closed doors…

Tony pulls out an anecdote to secure how positive the gossip is.

“One time, he had a bet with some of the techs in my department, and they blew up a set of his armor with actual det-cord explosives. He put the armor back together in half an hour, solo with just the standard toolbox.”

“For real?”

“It looked brand new, mintier than motherfucking tic tacs.” Tony had maybe gotten a lot of late night mileage out of that in spite of himself and his ideals. 

“So the bet was that he couldn’t rebuild it?” 

Tony grins, dragging out the tension for the sake of storytelling. His audience will appreciate it.

“No, bet was that the techs could tell apart the suits of armor to see which one they’d blown up.”

His pilot du jour lets out a low whistle of respect. By the time his buddies at the airfield hear the story, Rhodes will have been blindfolded or stumbling drunk, too, courtesy of Bounce’s tendency to the dramatic. Melanie will probably eventually hear a version that involves Tony assisting in the effort which is not at all true. Tony had made 50 dollars on it, sure, but it’s not like it was that time when he and Rhodey were in the VIO labs testing out the new--

Well. It’s a good story.

“I just got myself shitcanned again, like always, that’s all. Don’t get torn up about it on my behalf,” Tony finally says, watching the needle gauges on the panel jump around.

“Bullshit,” Castle says, startling Tony with how angry he sounds. Tony sits up and prepares to push back on what seems to be a real barnstormer of a bitchfest about Iron Man or something but Bounce keeps going.

“You’ve been doin’ the best you can, alright? You ain’t your job. Whatever happened, happened, but you’re not some shitty chucklefuck contractor who swans in and gets kicked for not doing his job right. There’s a million and one of those guys eating up resources and not pulling their weight. Any industry, I promise you that. Like that type of fish that hangs around a shark trying to get scraps. What’re they called? You know what I’m talking about, you’re a smart ass son of a bitch, what’s the name of that fish?”

“Uh, remora fish,” Tony says absently, confused about the direction of this pep talk. He does know a bit about fish, he’s trying to not think about that either right now though.

“Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about, look at the brains on you. You’re not that type of dude. You mouthed off or didn’t follow orders, big deal, you always pulled your weight if not the whole team’s fucking weight. You’re a certified genius, man, and you’re not some rich yes-man looking for a buck. You've been through a lot, and you’re more than that.”

“Are we still discussing my old job and not your supply chain distributor?”

Bounce smacks his shoulder lightly. Well, lightly for him.

“If Iron Man’s fancy scientists didn’t wanna keep you on board for being a bit of a shithead sometimes, that’s his loss. If you fucked up bad somehow, you more than deserve another shot at it. I know you’d make it right. You ain’t gonna listen to me about this, but I’m still gonna tell you.”

Tony’s at a loss for what to say.

“If you don’t want another shot, that’s up to you, but don’t act like you’re the scum of the earth and need to go beg for the right to be let in the door. You’re not some fucking useless add-on option. And hell, if you did fuck up bad, I’d still come get you.”

“Any day,” Bounce adds, cutting off whatever Tony is opening his mouth to say, “no questions.”

“When’d you get so fucking wise, Bouncy?” Tony shoots back, physically unable to take the sentiment without losing his entire shit. He isn’t 100 percent sure on what timezone they’re in, but he generally tries not to have too many breakdowns in the same 48 hour period, not that Bounce is helping.

“Don’t need all your book learning to have my head on straight,” Bounce says, playing up his accent in how hard he’s leaning into his vowels. “Mr. MIT graduate.”

“Yeah, yeah, like you weren’t just calling me a genius five fucking seconds ago, Mr. Good Ole Boy.”

“Listen, I know having to talk about your feelings on your deployment gives you hives and everything,” his pilot says, which Tony groans at, loud and annoying as possible. Bounce ignores him as per usual. “But I gotta tell you this.”

“Great intro, really nailing the argument here,” Tony mutters.

“Look, when you were there….You know any one of us would’ve come get you if we would have been able to. Three people got bumped down a peg for conspiring to steal a vehicle to do it after the second exfil failed, man, did you know that? And after, the g-men wouldn’t let any of us go see you because they wanted the spotlight, like the whole base wasn’t ready to mother hen you to death,” Bounce says. “What happened with that mission wasn’t on you. None of the shitshow was your fault, and no matter what you did after, you’re not the guy you treat yourself like.”

“Are we really Good Will Hunting this right now? Really?” Tony snaps, because he didn’t actually know any of that. It doesn’t change anything now, it doesn’t bring anyone back a decade on. It doesn’t repair any bridges Cocaine Tony burned to crisp, or any relationships Drunk Tony ran off the rails. “Are you going to repeat that it’s not my fault until I weep tenderly and have an epiphany about my personality disorder or my dad or whatever?”

“I hate to be the one to inform you, Stark,” Bounce says with all the commanding officer sanguine humor he’s been saving up for Tony’s bullshit, apparently, “but right now we are actually flying to the West Coast for you to go to school because you got the fuck out of Dodge.”

“As a teacher! I’m not Matt Damon in this.”

“And I am far more attractive than Robin Williams, fuck you. Just saying don’t beat yourself up. You’re not the worst thing to happen or whatever, you goddamn drama queen. Stop shooting yourself in the foot with your own self-hatred, you little punk.”

Tony exhales. He’s feeling squirmy and pinned down at the same time. 

“It’s Jarvis,” he eventually says, in lieu of apologizing. 

“What?”

“My last name. It’s not Stark anymore, it’s Jarvis.”

“Huh,” Bounce says, carefully neutral.

“Howard and Maria died in a car crash while I was in rehab and awaiting soon-to-be jail, and then Anna got the cancer diagnosis after I was out and I just didn’t want to be that man’s son anymore, right? I didn’t want to be a political prop or a business heir or any of it.”

“Good for you. I mean, I was gonna be surprised but in a non-homophobic way if you got married and suddenly needed a flight cross country but that’s good to hear.”

“Fuck, now I’m tired again,” Tony groans. “Can we stop talking about this? I am trapped here with you for the next however long it is, and I want to get to the landing strip with at least some chance at looking like my passport photo and not a snot monster.”

“Well, I can tell you about my dogs and my wife. And my transport company bullshit, but I suspect you ain’t want to hear all that.” He holds out a desiccated jerky stick to Tony like a peace offering, and Tony takes it gladly.

“No, no, I love gossip, we’ve been out of touch for a long time but I know you haven’t forgotten my essential characteristics of pettiness and judgement.”

“Oh, in that case, lemme tell you about this fuckin’ latest regulation I have to get my guys to adhere to. It’s some prime beef I got with this,” Bounce says, and he’s off to the races. Tony suspects that Bounce has manipulated him in some capacity to get to rant about whatever it is, but he can’t even be all the angry since his former CO does know how to spin a good yarn. 

And if there’s too much terrible probably-somewhat-meat-based-product in his mouth to talk too much, Tony’ll gladly consume just about anything. He lets Bounce set the scene and attempts to chew.

**Author's Note:**

> Castle was a name I pulled out of thin air because I forgot that Frank Castle existed because of the constant misappropriation of The Punisher character by law enforcement types and also the terrible TV decisions made, so if you want it to be a less awful version of Frank who's also not a Marine, feel free.
> 
> Ramirez was the lady in the IM1 'Fun-vee', as I initially had wanted it to be that the characters there had survived and had stayed in touch with Tony, though it wasn't his unit. But a later chapter might go into his trajectory in the Army Corps Engineers if I can be arsed to plot out and research that.


End file.
